The development of the F-35 program has cost $406.5 billion to date and each one is gonna cost like $120 million and they're gonna build like 1700 of them. I don't know if this is including the totally rad helmet mounted HUD costs $400,000 a pop and doesn't work. Gutting that would free up a ton of space. It also loses dogfights against F-16s which came into service in the '70s so I'm not sure its a good use of money. The F-35 is just the most egregious waste of money in the military-industrial complex. The US could still have the most powerful military by an order of magnitude with less than a quarter of its current military budget.

Well that's reassuring I suppose. Did they get around to fixing the helmet then? Either way the money could seriously be spent on an infinity of better things.

This is not really a subject matter I follow closely so I cannot say much, except that I know, as with most topics in media, things are sometimes exaggerated, misinterpreted, or blown out of proportions.

What I do know, is that there was a very interesting simulation run with a very complex war simulation program, set in Europe, featuring the F-35, and the opponent was the Russian Sukhoi Su-35S. The result? Complete domination by the F-35 (3:0 to 4:0 kill-ratio).

Anyways, even with a massive defense budget, the US could easily fund so many more things. But too many Americans are afraid of taxes, etc. I gladly pay mine for 100% free health care.

Last night Sean Hannity (Fox News contributor) said, “many are hailing Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez as a rising star on the political landscape but in reality, her views, her policy positions, are actually downright scary.” And then showed a graphic outlining her platform:

Well that's reassuring I suppose. Did they get around to fixing the helmet then? Either way the money could seriously be spent on an infinity of better things.

This is not really a subject matter I follow closely so I cannot say much, except that I know, as with most topics in media, things are sometimes exaggerated, misinterpreted, or blown out of proportions.

What I do know, is that there was a very interesting simulation run with a very complex war simulation program, set in Europe, featuring the F-35, and the opponent was the Russian Sukhoi Su-35S. The result? Complete domination by the F-35 (3:0 to 4:0 kill-ratio).

Anyways, even with a massive defense budget, the US could easily fund so many more things. But too many Americans are afraid of taxes, etc. I gladly pay mine for 100% free health care.

For the amount of money thrown at the military industrial complex you could get free college, healthcare and childcare. Its truly insane.

"Knowledge is as infinite as the stars in the sky;
There is no end to all the subjects one could study.
It is better to grasp straight away their very essence--
The unchanging fortress of the Dharmakaya."– Longchenpa.

The couple cases i've looked at in the US were not so clear cut, they weren't gay couples coming in and saying "make us a gay cake with a big gay decoration" or anything like that. In one case I know of in Oregon, the people in question had been patrons for years, the cake they requested was not weird or out of place in the least, and the proprietors simply refused once they found out it was gay wedding, it had little to do with the cake. What is illegal is not providing services on the basis of sexual orientation.

Here's a wiki with one of the landmark cases, you can see clearly that the owner admittedly simply refuses to make cakes for gay weddings, though he said they could buy anything else in the store. That is pretty textbook discrimination - "Here, you can't have this thing I will provide to everyone else because of who you are", additionally, according to the wiki, the initial encounter did not even involve a discussion of cake decoration, etc.

I agree that a business should be able to refuse to provide services in the case of being asked to support things they do not (the Nazi example is apropos there), but in some of these cases that is not what happened at all. What happened was some gay people ordered a cake and got turned down solely on the basis of being gay, not on the basis of what they requested, and that is the important part.

Now, cases where a business would be compelled to create a "gay cake" or "nazi cake" etc..of course, they should be able to refuse to create a product such as that, it would be interesting to know if some of the cases occupy this grey area.

Don't want to be pedantic, but Masterpiece was a relatively important decision and it is worth understanding what the opinion said.

The case was about compelled expression, and the majority punted on the decision in a somewhat spineless way. The cakeshop owner argued that his work was expressive conduct, and that he therefore could not be compelled to make a cake that supported something against his religious views (in this case, gay marriage). That argument would not be available to, say, a grocer, a hotel, or any other establishment that can't use the fig leaf of "expressive conduct" to describe their services. Unfortunately it does cover a vague and broad set of services (hairdressers? cooks? musicians?) and the case did not really resolve the boundaries of what expressive conduct is for this purpose.

Where SCOTUS punted is that they overturned the decision of the tribunal on the grounds that it showed animus. A member of the tribunal had made public comments about how religion has been an excuse to persecute minorities for centuries etc etc., and the majority held that the baker hadn't received fair treatment in the process.

This is, in my opinion, a bad opinion for at least three reasons.

1. The statements by the tribunal member about organized religion were objectively correct.
2. Even if the tribunal member had animus, that doesn't invalidate the tribunal's decision. Judges have personal animus all the time - e.g., Justice Scalia - that does not require recusal.
3. The majority decided that comments outside the tribunal process were reasonable grounds to infer animus in this case - then a few weeks later, almost exactly the same members of the majority decided that Trump's statements about immigrants were not material when deciding the "muslim ban" injunction. I know, different standards apply, but still, it looks terrible

However the reason they achieved a majority here, and got Kennedy not just to join but to author the opinion, is that they framed the decision in terms of the procedure by which the case against the baker was adjudicated. Had they gone for a blanket opinion carving any expressive conduct out from anti-discrimination law, I doubt they would have had a majority.

Hmm, on the surface i'm not sure why you would want to cut out the expressive conduct thing. In this particular case the results might be odious, but it makes sense to me that they considered just that, that is sort of the crux of the issue to me. I personally don't see how it would matter unless they were asked to somehow make a "gay cake", like in the case I linked in Ireland.

I'll ask my wife her opinion of the case as a legal person, I understand most of your complaints, but I don't really understand the objection to the "expressive conduct" theory in question, other than not liking the results or the categorical vagueness.

"it must be coming from the mouthy mastermind of raunchy rapper, Johnny Dangerous”

Hmm, on the surface i'm not sure why you would want to cut out the expressive conduct thing. In this particular case the results might be odious, but it makes sense to me that they considered just that, that is sort of the crux of the issue to me. I personally don't see how it would matter unless they were asked to somehow make a "gay cake", like in the case I linked in Ireland.

I'll ask my wife her opinion of the case as a legal person, I understand most of your complaints, but I don't really understand the objection to the "expressive conduct" theory in question, other than not liking the results or the categorical vagueness.

It makes sense when you see it in the context of the broader conservative litigation tactics, specifically around how they use the first amendment. One of their major projects over the past decade has been to utilize the first amendment to attack all sorts of things they dislike. So in the crisis pregnancy center case, forcing the fake clinics to show factually correct information was compelled speech; in Masterpiece, they wanted to protect expressive conduct; and in Janus, union dues were portrayed as funding for political speech.

This is a major evolution in the use of the first amendment, one that was never forseen at the time, and as such it is completely inconsistent with the originalist jurisprudence of the likes of Scalia, Thomas and now Gorsuch. But they don't really care about consistency.

Kagan nailed this completely in her dissent on Janus (which I'd recommend reading - it's a very good argument):

There is no sugarcoating today’s opinion. The majority overthrows a decision entrenched in this Nation’s law— and in its economic life—for over 40 years. As a result, it prevents the American people, acting through their state and local officials, from making important choices about workplace governance. And it does so by weaponizing the First Amendment, in a way that unleashes judges, now and in the future, to intervene in economic and regulatory policy...
And maybe most alarming, the majority has chosen the winners by turning the First Amendment into a sword, and using it against workaday economic and regulatory policy. Today is not the first time the Court has wielded the First Amendment in such an aggressive way. See, e.g., National Institute of Family and Life Advocates v. Becerra, ante, p. ___ (invalidating a law requiring medical and counseling facilities to provide relevant information to users); Sorrell v. IMS Health Inc., 564 U. S. 552 (2011) (striking down a law that restricted pharmacies from selling various data). And it threatens not to be the last. Speech is everywhere—a part of every human activity
(employment, health care, securities trading, you name it). For that reason, almost all economic and regulatory policy affects or touches speech. So the majority’s road runs long. And at every stop are black-robed rulers overriding citizens’ choices. The First Amendment was meant for better things. It was meant not to undermine but to protect democratic governance—including over the role of public-sector unions.

Watch this space. There will be many more landmark cases of this kind, particularly if the republicans succeed in putting a ultra-conservative justice in Kennedy's chair. Which, BTW, is why the mid-terms will be the single most important election in the next decade. If the democrats can retake the senate, they can put a moderate justice into the court. If they can't, the court will be stacked in favor of the right wing for years to come.